I had a enchanted iron pickaxe with Efficiency IV and Unbreaking III. I placed it on an anvil along with 41 iron bars. The anvil said Too Expensive with an "X" in red. I took the 41 iron bars off and put one on and was able to partially repair the pickaxe. I repeated this three more times and was able to completely repair the pickaxe.
Since I was able to completely repair the pickaxe in four consecutive steps o0ne iron bar at a time, it shouldn't have said too expensive when I put at least four iron bars on in the first place.
Comments 6
I don't agree. All the XP was available when I first tried the repair as a single operation. When I did it in 4 steps no additional XP was earned between steps – no time or game play ensued between the 4 consecutive repairs which were each done one right after the other??? I still have 445 experience after the four individual repairs.
Ah, that was the missing piece of information that I did not know. Why is that? That probably explains why sometimes I cannot repair an item no matter what I do presumably because it is more damaged than 39 XP will repair even one step at a time.
See this comment by Dinnerbone:
The more powerful a tool is, the more it costs to repair. From any tool that you get through "normal" enchanting, they will never be too expensive to repair unless you're under extreme circumstances (tool has 1 durability left and you won the enchanting jackpot).
Every time you repair a tool, it costs more to repair later.
With the above two facts in mind, it makes sense from a design perspective, to me at least, to have this cap. The more powerful a tool and the more you keep repairing it, eventually you just have to let it go and get a new one. We don't want the anvil to take away the need for crafting new tools and enchanting them; just postpone it.
I believe this is working as intended, considering I'm sure each time you repaired the pick it needed more xp for each repair than the previous repair.